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The Lady Pays Off (Universal-International) proceeds from the doubtful premise that voluptuous Linda Darnell, a famed U.S. schoolteacher who has adorned the cover of TIME, cannot get men interested in her for her own sake. They think of her only as a companion for their kids.

Linda hustles off to a Reno vacation in search of romance. She loses $10,000 to Stephen McNally, owner of a gambling casino, who offers to swap her I.O.U. for a summer of tutoring for his little girl (Gigi Perreau). Linda reluctantly agrees, protesting so much that it takes no cinema connoisseur to see that her annoyance will soon blossom into love.

What little fun this frail comedy offers comes not from its hard-working principals but from two supporting players: Virginia Field, playing a flip, catty blonde who exchanges hisses with Linda over McNally, and Nestor Paiva as the Mexican owner of a broken-down fishing smack, who takes a gleefully perverse delight in his own misfortunes.

Let's Make It Legal (20th Century-Fox) is billed as a comedy, but the joke is on Claudette Colbert. Last year a back injury kept her from playing the Bette Davis role in All About Eve; she has filled her commitment to 20th Century-Fox in Let's Make It Legal. The injury turns out to have put her in double jeopardy by shifting her from 1950-3 best comedy to one of 1951'S worst. The film also traps Macdonald Carey and Zachary Scott in a dreary mishmash about a man wooing his wife all over again against the deadline of their divorce decree and the competition of her old rich beau.

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